The Use of Twitter As a News Source in Sports Reporting
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THE USE OF TWITTER AS A NEWS SOURCE IN SPORTS REPORTING A Thesis presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School University of Missouri In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts By BRIAN P. DUNLEAVY Dr. Timothy Vos, Thesis Committee Chair DECEMBER 2014 The undersigned, appointed by the Dean of the Graduate School, have examined the thesis entitled: THE USE OF TWITTER AS A NEWS SOURCE IN SPORTS REPORTING Presented by Brian P. Dunleavy A candidate for the degree of Master of Arts And hereby certify that in their opinion, it is worthy of acceptance. ______________________________________________ Professor Tim P. Vos _______________________________________________ Professor Gregory Bowers _______________________________________________ Professor Jacqui Banaszynski _______________________________________________ Professor Melissa Click ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Any shortcomings in the design of or conclusions drawn from this research project are by no means a reflection on the outstanding guidance and support I have received from my Thesis Committee Chair, Professor Timothy Vos, and the rest of the Committee, namely Professor Melissa Click, Professor Jacqui Banaszynski, and Professor Greg Bowers. A debt of immense gratitude is also owed to program advisor Sarah Smith-Frigerio, for her guidance and for keeping me on track. Finally, I would also like to thank my wife, Eileen Shulock, for her patience and support throughout this amazing journey. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements page ii Abstract page v Chapter I Introduction page 1 Chapter II Literature Review page 3 Athletes and Twitter page 3 Twitter as a news source page 4 Theoretical Framework: Gatekeeping Theory page 7 Gatekeeping and source selection page 9 Chapter III Methods and Research Questions (RQs) page 16 Explanation of Terms page 16 Methodology Overview: Textual Analysis page 18 Methodology Overview: Interviews page 21 Data Analysis page 28 Chapter IV Results: An Overview of the Findings on RQ1 page 29 Findings of the Textual Analysis page 29 Twitter as part of the beat page 30 Tweets As Quotes page 34 Twitter as a Source for Breaking News page 37 Tweets as the Trigger of a Story page 40 Twitter as a Gauge of Public Opinion page 42 Interview Subjects’ Views on Factors Contributing to Twitter’s Use as a Source page 44 Twitter and source credibility page 50 Summary: RQ1 Results page 53 Chapter V Results: An Overview of the Findings on RQ2 page 55 Twitter and Gatekeeping: the Reporters’ Views page 55 Twitter: an unfiltered resource page 56 Twitter: reporting or “re-reporting?” page 57 Still at the gates: access and depth page 59 Twitter: athletes’ PR tool page 61 Summary: RQ2 Results page 63 iii Chapter VI Discussion and Conclusions page 64 References page 75 Appendix A Interview Questionnaire—Sports Reporters page 80 Interview Questionnaire—Sports Editors page 82 Appendix B Informed Consent Document for interview subjects page 83 Appendix C Biographical sketches of study participants page 84 Appendix D Summary of articles citing Twitter as a news source page 88 iv ABSTRACT Professional athletes are actively using Twitter to communicate directly with each other and their fans. Relatively little media and/or mass communications research has explored the effect this direct communication channel has had on the role of journalists who cover these athletes and have served in a gatekeeping role, deciding what news and information is worthy of coverage. The present study sought to assess how reporters covering the four major U.S. sports—baseball, basketball, football, and hockey—are using athletes’ Twitter feeds in their coverage and what impact athletes’ presence on Twitter has had on their role as gatekeepers. A search of sports beat coverage in eight daily newspapers during a one-month period yielded a total of 74 articles in which an athletes’ Twitter feed was used as a source. A textual analysis of these articles revealed that athletes’ tweets are used in place of quotes when an interview is not possible, as a source of breaking news about the athlete and/or his team, as the genesis of a story, and to gauge public sentiment toward an athlete. Interviews with 20 of the sports reporters covering the four major sports at the eight newspapers and five of the editors at these outlets confirmed these uses. Respondents also acknowledged that Twitter has enabled athletes to communicate directly with their fans without involving the traditional sports media. However, most the respondents also noted that the limitations of the medium kept their roles as reporters relevant to the fan/reader. v Chapter I Introduction J.R. Smith is a well-known—and successful—professional basketball player in the National Basketball Association (NBA). In November 2013, Smith made national headlines when, as a member of the New York Knicks, he appeared to threaten a rival NBA player, Brandon Jennings, via a tweet sent to his 400,000-plus followers on Twitter (Mahoney, 2013). The incident did not mark the first time—or the last—the mercurial player made news on his Twitter feed (New York Daily News Staff, 2014) and, from a journalistic perspective, this raises a number of questions. For example: Is what an athlete tweets newsworthy? And, are journalists who report on what athletes tweet merely re-reporting what is essentially old news? Founded in 2006, Twitter is a social networking and microblogging service that allows users to send and receive short, text-based posts (of 140 characters or less), known as “tweets.” It has been well documented that athletes, like all celebrities, have embraced social media, including Twitter (Gregory, 2009; Sanderson, 2013). Twitter has been described as a “broadcast” medium that can be used by newsmakers—including professional athletes—to break news about their own professional and personal lives (Ahmad, 2010). Indeed, athletes have proved to be some of the most popular personalities on the platform; for example, NBA star LeBron James has nearly 14.5 million followers (Twitter, 2014). However, while a great deal of mass communications research has focused on how athletes are using Twitter to communicate directly with each other and their fans (Hambrick 1 et al, 2010; Browning & Sanderson, 2012; Sanderson, 2013), little is known about the effect this direct communication has had on the role of the journalists—namely, sports reporters— who cover them. For decades, sports reporters have served a gatekeeping role, deciding which aspects of sporting events, including the thoughts and reactions of the athletes who participate in them, are worthy of coverage (Lau & Russell, 1980). However, Twitter offers athletes the opportunity to bypass the traditional gates, potentially resulting in a change in the dynamic between sports reporters and the athletes they cover. Indeed, an attraction of Twitter for athletes who use it is that their tweets enable them to communicate directly with fans, rather than having their messages filtered through publicists and/or the mainstream media (Hambrick et al, 2010; Gregory, 2009), and some reporters have noted that athletes have become far more difficult to reach for one-on-one interviews since the advent of social media (Hutchins, 2011). This study was designed to assess how newspaper sports reporters are using the Twitter feeds for the athletes they cover as a source and to learn what impact, if any, the expanding social media presence of athletes has on their roles as gatekeepers on the beat. The study design incorporated two qualitative methods: a textual analysis of athletes’ tweets as they are used by newspaper sports journalists in their coverage and interviews with these journalists—and their editors—to determine their views on and use of Twitter as a news source. Given the aforementioned historical role of sports reporters on the beat, gatekeeping theory provided the theoretical framework for this study. 2 Chapter II Literature Review Despite Twitter’s relatively short history, a significant amount of research has centered on the presence of athletes on the social media platform and its use as a news source. However, as this brief literature review highlights, few if any of the existing studies have focused on these specific issues within the context of sports reporting, or on how Twitter ultimately is used in the sourcing of information reported, as the present study attempts to do. This section will review existing studies on athletes’ Twitter presence and the role of Twitter as a news source. Finally, the theoretical framework for this study— gatekeeping theory, as it applies to Twitter as well as to the selection of sources in reporting in general—will also be discussed. Athletes and Twitter. A number of studies have explored how athletes—and other celebrities—are using Twitter, and what they are tweeting. Although this is not the focus of the present study per sé, this area of research does provide important historical context. Browning and Sanderson (2012), for example, conducted interviews with 20 National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I student-athletes at a single university on their use of Twitter and found that athletes largely use the medium to communicate with each other (i.e., friends at other schools) and to connect with fans. Hambrick et al. (2010), meanwhile, culled the 20 most recent tweets (at the time of study initiation) from 510 (male and female) professional football, baseball, basketball, hockey, and soccer players, as well as professional golfers and found that most of the athletes’ tweets were devoted to interacting 3 with fans (34 percent), although a high percentage (28 percent) also dealt with subjects not related to themselves or their respective sports. Information sharing and content were next at 15 percent and 13 percent, respectively, while promotional tweets numbered only 5 percent. Although Browning and Sanderson (2012) and Hambrick et al. (2010) employ some of the same methodology as this study, they focus on the athletes’ use of Twitter, rather than on the use of their feeds by those who cover them.